TC BioPharm - safe CAR T therapy based on gamma delta T cells

Chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, are a promising approach to cancer therapy that uses human T-cells.

In conventional CAR-T, when the CAR binds to a cancer cell, 2 stimulatory signals are triggered, and the T-cell gets activated to kill the cancer cell.

Unfortunately, CARs may also bind to target antigens on healthy cells and kill them.
This can result in very serious side effects.

TC BioPharm improves the safety profile of CAR-T therapy by selecting a special type of T-cell called a gamma delta T-cell.

They are different from the majority of T-cells - known as alpha beta T-cells - because they have a T-cell receptor (TCR) that detects stressed or cancer cells.

At TC BioPharm, gamma delta T-cells are engineered with a modified CAR that has only one stimulatory domain.

The primary stimulatory domain is part of the natural gamma delta TCR.

This TCR acts like a safety catch, because the T cell can only be fully activated when the TCR recognizes stress signals such as those on tumor cells.

Only then will the target cell be killed, assisted by the CAR stimulation.

If a CAR binds to a healthy cell, the TCR does not bind, and only one signal is triggered. The T-cell is not activated, and the healthy cell is not killed.

As a result, dangerous side effects of CAR T therapy are greatly reduced, while selectively maintaining potent anti-cancer activity.

TC BioPharm has built innovative platform technologies around gamma delta T-cells and is developing a pipeline of allogeneic drugs to treat a range of hematological and solid cancers.

[Wesley_H]

4 years later and this still isn’t everywhere.